Now, to get back on topic, i am not very familiar with game development, specially the financial area, so i am curious: Assuming there is a kickstarter for Zero Escape 3, what would be the amount needed to fund the development of the game? I think novels are one of the most affordable genre to develop, since it's mostly text-based and not much gameplay. There is still the cost of the 3D characters model, puzzles, soundtrack and voice actors, among other things, but compared to more traditional games, i assume the overall cost is much much lower. Is this about right, or there are things i'm ignoring?

It really depends on what they want to do with it. If they go with an Indiegogo campaign (from what I understand Japan isn't supported by Kickstarter), they could start out really low and just get the bare bones to make it. I don't know if Kickstarter lets you do this, but Indiegogo lets them keep all the money even if they don't reach the goal. So they could just work with the money they get and adjust production values from there. Personally I'm not a fan of the crowdfunding method games have been making and have not been impressed by the results so far.

My prediction is that Chunsoft will fund it by the end of the year through compromise, probably lower production values than VLR and on a single system (if multiplatform would cost more, I don't know). Kotaro Uchikoshi seemed extremely confident that his vision will see the light of day one way or another.

I wouldn't be surprised if VAs took a pretty good chunk of the budget. Quite frankly, I'd be ok if they scrapped voices for ZE3; 999 wasn't any worse-off without it.

I do know that the 3D models are cheaper to make than the 2D ones (which is actually a real drag, IMO).

I remember being skeptical about VLR having "cut-scenes" and voice acting (thankfully it all turned out fine). Even if they do skip out on the VAs for the Japanese release, I wouldn't be surprised if Aksys decided to have English ones.